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Sponge Cake (Twelve eggs pint pulverized)
Twelve eggs, pint pulverized sugar, one of flour, measured before sifting, small tea-spoon salt, heaping tea-spoon baking powder, essence of lemon for flavor; beat the whites to a very stiff froth, and add sugar; beat the yolks, strain and add them to the whites and sugar, and beat the whole thoroughly; mix baking-powder and salt in the flour and add last, stirring in small quantities at a time; bake one hour in a six-quart pan in a moderate oven. This makes one very large cake. By weight use one pound pulverized sugar and three-fourths pound flour. - Miss S. Alice Melching.
A twelve-egg foam cake from the era when a pint measure did the work of a scale — though Miss Melching helpfully supplies the weights as well. The hinge is the flour: it goes in last, in small additions, and must be folded rather than beaten.
- Pulverized sugarThis means granulated sugar ground fine, the equivalent of today's superfine or caster sugar — not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will dull the crumb. A pint weighs about 1 lb, which matches the weight given.
- The flour measureOne pint of flour measured before sifting, stated as three-quarters of a pound, is about 340 g. Weigh it; a pint of unsifted flour scooped by volume can run heavier than the weight the recipe gives.
- A moderate ovenThe book never states temperatures; conventionally a moderate oven is read as somewhere around 325-350F. A cake this deep may take a dark crust before the centre sets, so the lower end for the full hour is the safer reading, with a skewer or the springback test to confirm.
- A six-quart panThe recipe names a capacity, not a shape. Six quarts is larger than a standard 10-inch tube pan, which holds about four quarts, so size up accordingly; a tube pan is a reasonable modern choice because the central tube carries heat into the middle of a very deep foam. Left ungreased, the batter can climb the sides.
- Adding the sugarBeat the whites to stiff peaks first, then add the sugar gradually as the recipe implies, rather than dumping a pint in at once. Straining the yolks catches chalazae and any shell, and is still worth doing.
- Folding, not stirring'Stirring in small quantities at a time' is best carried out today as folding. Sift the flour with the salt and baking powder over the surface in three or four additions and cut it in with a spatula; overworking here deflates an hour's beating.
- Essence of lemonLemon essence of the period could be considerably stronger than modern extract. Use about 1 teaspoon of lemon extract, or the zest of one lemon rubbed into the sugar.
- CoolingInvert the pan immediately and let the cake hang until fully cold, or the structure will compress under its own weight.
- Yield'One very large cake' is accurate: a pan this size will serve a crowd. A half batch will fit a smaller tube pan and will need appreciably less than the full hour, so test it early.
Sponge cake is the older half of the American cake tradition: leavened by beaten egg, it predates chemical leavening by centuries and was the test of a cook's arm before mechanical beaters were common in home kitchens. That this 1877 Ohio version carries a heaping teaspoon of baking powder is telling — commercial baking powders had spread through the 1860s and 70s, and compilers of the period sometimes added a little chemical insurance to the old egg-foam method. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, assembled in Marysville, Ohio, credits a great many of its recipes to named contributors, and the signature at the end of this recipe follows that practice. The recipe gives both volume and weight equivalents at a time when the cup and pint measure ruled American kitchens.